Artist and His Work Embody Spirit of Success : Jacob Lawrence’s series of paintings celebrates the lives of two famous abolitionists

In the courtyard of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, they do not hesitate to approach painter Jacob Lawrence.

They are black and white, male and female, museum employees and members of the public. They have seen the exhibit, “Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of Narrative Paintings.”

Seattle resident Lawrence is accommodating, as excited but respectful fans thrust posters and catalogues at him for autographs.

Lawrence stands as this beacon of inspiration because he and his work embody an irresistible optimistic spirit that is scarce in these contentious, difficult times. His images speak of achieving success against all odds.

The “Douglass” and “Tubman” series celebrate the lives and accomplishments of two brave American abolitionists. Both born into slavery in Maryland, each had the individual will not only to escape from tyranny, but also to serve others in the pursuit of freedom and justice at great risk to themselves. Accompanying the paintings are texts, chosen by Lawrence, describing the events portrayed. The direct, matter-of-fact explanations complement his small, energetic, heartfelt renderings, which are filled with rage, pain, anger and joy.

Lawrence was just 21 when he was inspired to paint the “Douglass” series of 32 paintings in 1938. He started the “Tubman” series of 31 paintings the following year.

“If these people, who were so much worse off than the people today, could conquer their slavery, we certainly can do the same thing. They had to liberate themselves without any education,” Lawrence said in 1940.

Born in 1917 in Atlantic City, N.J., Lawrence moved to Harlem in 1930. From 1932 to 1937 he studied at the Harlem Art Workshops, which were supported by the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). From 1937 to 1939, he attended the American Artists School in New York on a scholarship. He was a student there when he began the “Douglass” and “Tubman” narratives.

Both series are part of the permanent collection of the Hampton University Museum in Virginia, a gift from the Harmon Foundation--an organization that supported ethnic and minority artists until it disbanded in 1967. Before the national tour of this exhibit began in 1991, the series had been exhibited together only twice since 1940. Now 75, Lawrence is pleased by the current recognition for this work.

“It’s important that people are responding to what I did 50 years ago, and it’s a wonderful feeling,” he said. “Beyond that, I would like to think it’s important because the works tell something about our history, and I don’t mean our ethnic history, but our history as a country, as a people, the struggle that has gone on, is going on and will continue in various forms.”

“We’re happy to have the exhibition because Jacob Lawrence is a very formidable figure in modern American art,” said Howard Fox, LACMA’s curator of contemporary art. “He is unique in his expression, both in style and content. It’s the content that I think is real key here.

“You get this young man growing up in Harlem, starting out painting images of daily life. As he’s exposed to more information through people who are a few years older than him, through his studies at the Schomburg Center, he begins to realize the ignored and often suppressed history of African Americans. And just as it was natural for him to paint daily life, it became his personal mandate to tell the history of the black people of America. It’s that kind of mantle that he assumes in a very unassuming way. It’s a personal response, and yet it has vast cultural resonance.”

The Schomburg Center that Fox refers to is part of the New York Public Library system. It is the largest holding of African-American studies materials in the world. Though it provided a wealthy source of material for his paintings, Lawrence gives considerable credit for the success of this early work to the artists and writers of the Harlem community, who nurtured his growth and development.

At the “306” studio of painter Charles Alston, where Lawrence was able to set up his own work area, he met writers Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, and painter Aaron Douglas. He said sculptor Augusta Savage was responsible for his hiring as an easel painter on the Federal Art Project in Harlem in 1938 and ’39.

“We had some wonderful, creative people in the community. That’s where it all started--my motivation--in the Harlem community,” Lawrence said. “The community was very supportive. I was made to believe that what I was doing had some value. Whenever we would meet, things happened in the studio. People would talk about their craft--actors, musicians. I was taking all this in, so it wasn’t exactly an intuitive response, it was a learning, and sometimes I think this kind of learning is missing” for young artists, he said.

“And we lived in a period then that was very socially conscious in all of the arts--John Steinbeck, Clifford Odets in literature. You had Martha Graham in dance, the Mexican muralists, the Asian woodcut people. There was a great interest in the work of Kathe Kollwitz,” he said. “So I benefited from that time.

“My first show took place in the Harlem community. People looked at it; they talked about it; they didn’t try to change me one way or the other. One of the most supportive people was Gwen here, who always had a feeling toward what I was doing.” Sitting next to him, his wife, Gwendolyn Knight, 80 and an artist herself, remembers that her husband had some critics who said he had “no talent whatsoever.”

But, she recalls, such opinions did not stop him from following his own path, because he “had a bit of steel in his backbone” she said.

Two of Knight’s 1940s watercolors of the New Orleans Creole quarter were on view earlier this year at New York’s Kraushaar Galleries show, “Significant Others: Artist Wives of Artists.” She was also given the National Honor Award by the Women’s Caucus for Art this year. In August, 1994, she will have a show at the Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle.

Lawrence received wide recognition outside the Harlem community beginning in 1941. Twenty-six paintings from another series, “The Migration of the Negro,” were exhibited at the Downtown Gallery in New York, and photographs of them were published in the November issue of Fortune magazine. Continuously painting, he also taught art at various universities from 1954 until his retirement as a professor of art at the University of Washington in 1987.

This summer he is working on four paintings for a November show in New York that deal with the “Builders” theme.

“The ‘Builders’ theme is something that I have been carrying on for years,” Lawrence said. “I like tools, people working with tools. I think that’s a result of an early experience I had of being around cabinetmakers when I was about 15. I never knew that a few years later this would become a great deal of my themes over a period of years.”

And he remains optimistic today as people continue the struggle to achieve liberty and justice for all.

“There’s always that feeling and sensitivity for the living, and when I say living things, I’m not just talking about the human being, but animals, the environment,” he said. “Many of us are very much aware of this, and I hope that my work contributes a little to that.”

“Jacob Lawrence: The Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman Series of Narrative Paintings” is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Aug. 22 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles . For information, call (213) 857-6000.